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enFrom Brokdorf to Fukushima: The long journey to nuclear phase-outhttp://thebulletin.org/brokdorf-fukushima-long-journey-nuclear-phase-out
Shortly after the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, Germany’s government started preparing legislation that would close the country’s last nuclear power plant by 2022. But this wasn’t an entirely new development: Germany had been planning to leave nuclear energy behind for decades, and to understand its nuclear phase-out requires a close look at the past. Several projects and events mark the beginnings of the German anti-nuclear power movement: Among them are the huge protests over the Brokdorf reactor, which began in 1976 and led to civil war-like confrontations with police, and the controversy over the Kalkar fast-neutron reactor in the mid-1970s. Because of these and subsequent developments—including the 1986 Chernobyl accident—by the 1990s, no one in German political life seriously entertained the idea of new reactor construction. This tacit policy consensus led to energy forecasts and scenarios that focused on energy efficiency, demand reduction, and renewable energy sources. By the time of the Fukushima accidents, many of these new energy priorities had already begun to be implemented and to show effect. Replacing nuclear power in Germany with other energy sources on an accelerated schedule is likely to come with a price tag, but, at the same time, Germany’s nuclear phase-out could provide a proof-of-concept, demonstrating the political and technical feasibility of abandoning a controversial high-risk technology. Germany’s nuclear phase-out, successful or not, may well become a game changer for nuclear energy worldwide.
2012-11-01 00:00:00<a href="/bio/alexander-glaser">Alexander Glaser</a>http://thebulletin.org/brokdorf-fukushima-long-journey-nuclear-phase-outGermany’s merger of energy and climate change policyhttp://thebulletin.org/2012/november/germany%E2%80%99s-merger-energy-and-climate-change-policy
Nuclear exit has been on the German policy agenda for more than three decades. After the Chernobyl accident in 1986, a majority of the public and relevant stakeholders opposed nuclear power and strove for renewable energy alternatives. At the same time, climate change policy gained the attention of German policy makers, and they approved ambitious targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2000, the federal government and the operators of nuclear power plants reached a phase-out agreement, and since 2002, the purpose of the Atomic Energy Act has been not the promotion but the phasing-out of commercial nuclear electricity generation. After the federal elections in 2009, the conservative–liberal coalition government implemented a slow-down of the phase-out. But that reversal provoked strong negative public reaction, and in response to the nuclear disaster in Japan, the German cabinet and the Bundestag agreed in the summer of 2011 to a gradual phase-out of nuclear power that will shut down the industry by 2022. They also agreed to accelerate the transformation of Germany’s energy portfolio. This transformation, or Energiewende, will include three key methods of replacing the electricity once produced by nuclear reactors: It will expand renewable energy production and provide the infrastructure needed for that expansion; it will significantly improve the country’s energy-efficiency efforts; and for a transition period, it will also encourage the construction of new and more efficient coal- and gas-fired power plants. Already, the Energiewende has observably decoupled energy supply from economic growth, with Germany’s energy supply and carbon-dioxide emissions dropping from 1990 to 2011 as its gross domestic product rose significantly. It is this evolving Energiewende, rather than the nuclear phase-out, that will require and, perhaps, inspire continuing reforms of social, economic, technological, and cultural policy in Germany.
2012-11-01 00:00:00<a href="/bio/lutz-mez">Lutz Mez</a>http://thebulletin.org/2012/november/germany%E2%80%99s-merger-energy-and-climate-change-policyThe politics of phase-outhttp://thebulletin.org/2012/november/politics-phase-out
The German decision to phase out nuclear energy following the Fukushima crisis builds on earlier political decisions to support the growth of renewable electricity, to improve energy efficiency, and to turn Germany toward sustainable energy and away from nuclear power. Germany is now embarking on what is known as the Energiewende, a plan to turn the entire economy to a low-carbon energy structure that does not make use of nuclear energy. The last nuclear power plants are scheduled to be shut down in 2022. Although there are still many skeptics of the phase-out plan, it has support across the political spectrum; Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union sees this as one of her top priorities, as do the opposition Greens and Social Democratic Party. In part, this support stems from the financial benefits that the shift to renewables has brought to many small- and medium-sized German businesses. The expansion of renewable energy capacity has been dramatic and now accounts for one-quarter of electricity production, up from about 3 percent in 1990.
2012-11-01 00:00:00<a href="/bio/miranda-schreurs">Miranda A. Schreurs</a>http://thebulletin.org/2012/november/politics-phase-outExit economics: The relatively low cost of Germany’s nuclear phase-outhttp://thebulletin.org/2012/november/exit-economics-relatively-low-cost-germany%E2%80%99s-nuclear-phase-out
The decision of the German government, post-Fukushima, to phase out the country’s nuclear power sector by 2022 builds on legislation in place since 2002. This earlier legislation was amended in 2010 to extend the lifetime of the nuclear plants, but the German parliament reversed this extension in the summer of 2011, slightly accelerating the original phase-out schedule; therefore, the market and the nuclear operators were prepared for the shutdown schedule. In this context, it is not surprising that the observed price impacts from the shutdown of 40 percent of the German nuclear power capacity in 2011 are smaller than some modeling exercises had projected. When empirical observation is analyzed in light of a range of economic models, the price effect of the nuclear phase-out can be expected to peak at 5 euros per megawatt-hour or less for a few years around 2020, a reasonably small increase compared with the uncertainties created by other fundamental determinants of Europe’s electricity prices. The macroeconomic effects attributable to the complete shutdown of nuclear power also appear likely to be relatively small, peaking at perhaps 0.3 percent of gross domestic product or less a few years before 2030. In the end, the management of the German transition to an energy mix dominated by renewable energies—and not the use of the existing nuclear reactor fleet for a decade more or less—will be the key determinant of whether that shift has larger or smaller effects on electricity prices or on the German economy overall.
2012-11-01 00:00:00<a href="/bio/felix-chr-matthes">Felix Chr. Matthes</a>http://thebulletin.org/2012/november/exit-economics-relatively-low-cost-germany%E2%80%99s-nuclear-phase-outThe legalities of a nuclear shutdownhttp://thebulletin.org/2012/november/legalities-nuclear-shutdown
In July 2002, Germany amended its Atomic Energy Act so no new nuclear power plants could be built and existing power plants would continue running only for a limited time. In 2009, however, a coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel took control of the German government and reversed the country’s nuclear phase-out policy, extending nuclear plant operating lives and announcing that risks associated with nuclear energy were insignificant. Three months later, just days after the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan, the German government abruptly reversed course again, closing eight older nuclear power plants and eventually ordering the nine remaining plants to cease operations by 2022, at the latest. Three out of the four operators of German nuclear power plants have since taken legal action, seeking compensation for profits supposedly lost as a result of the nuclear policy change. But due to a number of factors—including the German constitution, which places a duty on the government to protect citizens, and the nuclear operators’ participation in the original 2002 agreement to phase out nuclear power—most legal observers believe these legal challenges to Germany’s nuclear exit are destined to fail. The German nuclear exit includes financial compromises that allow nuclear operators to recoup investments in their nuclear power plants, and the legal protection these compromises provide to the government may be the part of the German initiative that is of most interest to other countries considering nuclear exits.
2012-11-01 00:00:00<a href="/bio/alexander-rossnagel">Alexander Rossnagel</a>, <a href="/bio/anja-hentschel">Anja Hentschel</a>http://thebulletin.org/2012/november/legalities-nuclear-shutdownThe German nuclear exit: Introductionhttp://thebulletin.org/2012/november/german-nuclear-exit-introduction
2012-11-01 00:00:00<a href="/bio/john-mecklin">John Mecklin</a>http://thebulletin.org/2012/november/german-nuclear-exit-introduction